BLOCKING, MIXING, MATCHING COLOURS

October 30, 2016

…all about colour combos

“as much as I love black, I feel the world is a happier place with colour”

– girleccentric

Hey ya!
Lately I’ve been experimenting with colours but since I’m not 100% comfortable in bright colours, I only go on my colour blocking adventure once in a while.
This post is all about colours. Matching, Mixing, Blocking. Trust me,after reading this, you’ll go on a colour blocking spree. I hope so at least 😉 .
These are rules to follow when colour blocking and it’ll be so easy for you. You can apply anyone of them that is most convinient for you.

Negatives

In converting a colour to its negative, it is reversed into its complementary colour.
Example
The negative of black is white.
The nagative of blue ranges from orange-yellow, depending on the shade of blue.
The negative of green ranges from magenta-pink, depending on the shade of green.
The negative of red ranges from green-cyan.
The negative of purple ranges from lemon green-yellow.
And vice versa.

Positive and invert (photo studio)
You can google negative of colours or if you have a photo editor with a ‘negative’ or ‘invert’ filter, you can just take a pic of the colour and use the filter to get the negative. Or you make use of a colour wheel. The opposite colours are complementary.

Negatives or complementary colours together, form a sharp contrast, which is good for colour blocking.
Blue and negative- orange.

Green and negative- pink.

Tints and Hues

You can pair a lighter shade of a colour with a darker shade of that colour. Graduate the colours. For instance, you can pair a light blue shirt with dark blue trousers or jeans.

Just play around the same hue.
Tints are the results of adding white to a colour.
Example, the tint of black is grey, because black+white=grey. The tint of red is pink, red+white=pink.
Red and pink

The tint of green is mint
Green and mint

So pair colours with their tints and same hue in different shades.

Pales and Pastels

Pastels are colurs that look desaturated, pale, washed out, and without strong chromatic content. Hence they can be seen as weak colours.
Examples are lilac, mint, peach, cotton candy.

Pastels go well together, no matter what pastel colour it is. As long as they both are pastel, they’ll go together.

Secondary meets Primary

Primary colours are blue, yellow and red.
Secondary colours are those colours you get when you combine any two of the primaries together. They are – purple, green, orange, brown.
Secondary colours might not go well together but they go with each primary. One secondary colour can be mixed with any primary colour.
Example
Purple + red/yellow/blue

Green + red/yellow/blue

So combine secondary colours with any primary colour- red/blue/yellow3-Colour Colour blocking tip
I stared at that heading over and over again wondering if that’s correct.
A simple tip when blocking with 3 colours. If you go down, you’ll see a list of 2-colour combinations I made. You can use them or you use any of the examples above.
When blocking with 3 colours, choose 2 sets of 2-colour combos with one common colour between them.
Example
Red and lilac work well
Blue and lilac work well
So my 3-colour combo would be red+lilac+blue
Get it?
Red and green go together
Purpule and red go together
3-colour combo would be red+purple+green

Red and green go together
Pink and green go together
3-colour combo would be red+green+pink